Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Indie Life: Meaningful

I have good news and bad news. Being the optimist I am, I’ll
start with the good news.

This month, I got two four star reviews of my novel on
Christian Manifesto. I also got good reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. The
biggest piece of good news of all? My novel is a quarterfinalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Yes, I screamed when I found out.

The bad news…I haven’t sold one copy of my book this month.
Not a single one.

So there is my stark honesty. My sales haven’t been great
before this month, but I must admit, I haven’t been promoting my novel as I
should. My marketing has been sidetracked by a series of bad migraines. I’ve
had to stay away from my computer quite a bit. This month, however, the few
sales I was getting dried up.

Now you may be thinking, good
reviews and promising contest results should mean something. I was thinking
the same thing. I thought they would mean more sales, but they don’t. That’s
one of the challenges of indie life. You find yourself wondering what it all
means. How do you interpret the ups and downs?

I think the best way to deal with all this is to remember
that this is a journey and in every journey there is good and bad. The bad does
cancel out the good. Nor does the good cancel out the bad. They co-exist in
indie life and every other part of life.

It’s also helpful to remember that bad occurrences don’t make the journey bad and good occurrences don’t make the journey
perfect. A balanced perspective is the key. This journey will have good and bad
in it. We want it that way. When good and bad co-exist, we can use a better word for our indie publishing journey: meaningful.

Despite my lack of sales, my journey is meaningful. I had
courage to believe in my writing. That’s meaningful. I’ve dealt with the myth that
sales and good reviews validate my writing career. That’s meaningful. I’ve
celebrated that my writing connects with my fans. All meaningful.

Regardless what my sales end up being, I’ve had a meaningful
month.

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